I bought my house from Jehovah’s Witnesses. They claim to be honest and whatnot, but that’s bull. They hid about $80,000 worth of defects that our inspector didn’t even see because it was so well done (and obviously done - like a new layer of drywall on an entire wall in a bedroom to hide the fact that there was a crack that leaked - just needed it to look pretty enough to sell - mold everywhere). Fuck those pricks.
Yeah the "Hospital Liaison Committee" is a JW gestapo that makes sure you don't agree to a blood transfusion to save* your or your child's life.
Edited but wanted to keep original because the joke below is friggn great
*don't agree to a blood transfusion to Dave your or your child's life.
My late husband was an ex-JW, and we got married on purpose just before he had a major surgery, specifically so that I, not his JW mother, would be his next of kin for medical questions.
JWs are fucking weird.
Do you mind giving some of the fun facts regarding Jehova’s Witnesses?
JW is actually one of the few that I haven’t done much research on. I’m curious to know.
Jesus return as King in 1914, kicked Satan out of Heaven and is now ruling. Human never saw any of this because it happened invisibly. Only 144000 will go to Heaven to rule over the earth, where the rest of the JW will be living in a restored paradise.
Jesus is only the son of God and not God in any way.
Every member is encouraged to go out reaching (though less so these days)
The world will end any day now ("we are in the last of the last days"). First government will attack/ destroy all religion except JW and declare peace and security. Then notice JWs, which they somehow missed and start to attack them. That is when God (Jehovah) steps in and destroys all nations and bad people. (basically all non-JW, though they change this recently to maybe some non-JW is survive too)
America and Britain is the King of the South and Russia is the King of the North (from Daniel's prophecies), and what Russia is doing is a sign of the end times.
Up till last year December, men were not allow to have beards, and women were not allow to wear slacks to church.
It is currently going though a change, to seem more main stream, but are very much a cult.
(i am an exJW, visit r/exjw for more facts)
My girlfriend is an ex JW. Some were going door to door in my neighborhood a few weeks ago and I answered, not knowing. She came upstairs and looked out the window after they left and was APPALLED that the woman in the group was wearing slacks.
If she doesnt have any PTSD from her time in the cult, show her [this picture ](https://preview.redd.it/governing-body-update-4-conventions-prisons-v0-dzz7la2h6v7d1.png?width=564&format=png&auto=webp&s=df399205fcd6421d57b92b584a5db2b1cadb9368)and she what she thinks.
(its one of the current leaders of JW, having a beard which would be very surprising to any exJW that is not following the updates of JW.)
When i was a kid the JW's started telling people, STAY ALIVE UNTIL 75, they were saying that was the year the tribulation was coming. A bunch of the JW's went and bought expensive houses and cars and just maxed out their credit, my parents included. Guess what did not happen in 1975?
When I was younger (in the 80s/90s), it was taught that the end would come before all those that was alive in 1914 died off, so like maximum the year 2000 or soon there after. Spoilers, it didn't come then either.
Now the have some weird 'overlapping generation' teaching which roughly point to 2035 as the final year. I guess we will have to wait and see. :D
They are a high control cult. One of the most dangerous at that:
> In religions such as the JW, the religion controls the incoming information, behaviors, and emotions through dichotomous classifications and shunning. The fight to maintain a sense of control can lead to domination over family members and reliance on patriarchal values.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9803876/#:~:text=In%20religions%20such%20as%20the,and%20reliance%20on%20patriarchal%20values.
There's a good episode of The Aftermath with Leah Remini that covers off on this. IIRC, they believe that they are the chosen ones that will be given a spot in the afterlife when the rapture happens. And not just a spot, but literally sitting on some ship floating above the earth, able to Witness the destruction of the heathens remaining down below. They don't celebrate any holidays, including birthdays. They also have some sort of policy around shunning those that leave the faith. There was worse stuff on the program but I don't remember it well enough to recount here.
They don’t observe any holidays. No birthdays, Christmas, and so on. If you don’t follow the rules, you get kicked out (disfellowshipped) and shunned. This is incredibly hard on everyone. And the blood thing…they’re not allowed to accept any kind of transfusions or blood products. However, in a hospital where I worked, a JW allowed FFP (fresh frozen plasma) to be given as it wasn’t a “blood” product. Go figure.
I grew up in it. At school whenever they did the pledge of allegiance i had to step out into the hallway. Someone's birthday, hallway, holiday related things, hallway. So blatantly setting your child apart from all the other kids was just a recipe for lifelong anxiety. Oh and no sports, which i did behind there back but really? No sports?
They strongly discourage higher education, and encourage going into the trades, especially contruction-related. They're also very insular, and aren't supposed to associate with non-members.
Their religious teachings are pretty odd, too. They believe that the archangel Michael is actually Jesus, or vice versa. Hubby tried explaining to me and it made no sense.
They also believe that 144,000 people will get into heaven. That's it. I asked what happens to the people who get bumped off this list, and he told me that after all the apocalypse stuff happens, the JWs who didn't make it into heaven will just be resurrected on earth to rebuild.
Genuine question: Where does 7th Day Adventist rank? I grew up in a Mormon town and they were all sort of creepy, especially to me who didn't go to church at all. There was one 7th Day Adventist girl at my school who was totally normal to me, *and* who the Mormons all loved. Been trying to piece this one together for years.
The ultimate grift is that the mormon church holds a hedge fund with 100 billion in it that the church quietly siphoned the tithing money into, and the poor people still keep sending in their tithing.
I would note too the LDS now is the end result of a century of highly organized rebranding and reform to go from being a pariah religion at war with the U.S. to a major church and movement showcasing how "American" it is.
Yeah. What makes it a cult is that we still have the newspaper articles from when it was started showing all the shenanigans and scams the founders pulled. We would throw those founders in jail for crimes today without hesitation. It's documented that their religious text is completely fabricated and made up by a man and absolutely nothing Devine was involved. But millions of people believe it now, so it's a religion not a cult.
This is what kills me. People spending their whole lifetimes devoting it to some dude basically claiming to have pulled something out of a hat and very clearly just making shit up as he went along.
All just so he could have multiple wives too. Modern Mormons would rather we all forget that polygamy for church elders and their yes men was foundational in the early days, and that they weren't above murder, theft, and kidnapping young children while building their Great Salt promised land (see the Mountain Meadows massacre)
The bible is not actually more credible just because it's older and some details of its writing have been lost.
Mormonism is more cult-like than mainstream Christianity because it exerts more control over how members live their lives, e.g. forcing people to go on recruiting missions and elders making major life decisions for younger members.
Yea but the Mormons translated their Book of Abraham from an Egyptian scroll before we knew how to translate it. When we learned we realized that was not in fact what the scroll said. There’s fase and then there’s grifting.
Joseph Smith was the grifter's grifter. His whole thing was con artistry and fake treasure for gullible fools. He announced his religion was ~~polytheistic~~ polygamous after his wife caught him in bed with someone else.
I was raised by fundamentalist evangelicals and it was everything ex-Mormons describe as culty. When I was in it I was controlled down to what music I listened to. When I left I lost friends and family en masse. I don't know that cult is a good descriptor of any belief structure that isn't based around being married to a living cult leader or killing yourself for the belief.
Christianity is too big to be collectively called a cult. But almost all branches/denominations of it, individually, are. Genetically modified sceptic in YouTube has some good videos about identifying cults. 2 big factors I remember are being required to listen to specific music and being alienated by family if you leave.
Then you can’t apply that to most denominations, most churches are not so restrictive about music you can listen to and they won’t ostracize you if you leave the church for a different denomination or church community.
I feel like this can probably be boiled down to a mathematical formula. The longer it's been since the founder of a religion has died the more it becomes a mainstream religion rather than a cult.
It goes without saying that it the founder is still alive then it is definitely still a cult
What if the person on the top is truly delusional? Would that be a religion in that case or still a cult?
I think it's more based on size, recency, and how harmful it is on the members.
Christianity is basically a cult of Paul's writing nearly 80 years after Jesus lived and assembled into the Bible 300 years later. There are still Catholic Church records of the original 11 Apostles writings and they are sometimes drastically different than the New Testament Bible... so the church ignores them and Protestants don't even accept them as real.
I would say it's more of a cult than the other major religions because it's more centralized. The power structure has given the church more control in decisions involving politics and business. Compared to the Catholic church which has lost a lot of central power in the US during the last century.
The catholic church has certainly run out of favor with the public in the US but depending where you live, they still hold a lot of power. In my state Catholic Social Services gets millions in state contracts for social service programs.
Is central power more culty? Isn’t any group a religion…like a political movement that has more central power is more culty? Seems odd. Not sure that’s a defining cult quality.
Central power gives more direction. Cults can't really achieve results if there's too much independence in their organization. I would say for being a powerful and practical cult, centralized power is needed.
I was giving a more US centric answer. If we start moving to middle east and asia, Mormons have no power and Islam becomes a power. But there are multiple Islamic sects/schools/branches which would be competing against each other and we would compare those.
Apart from any dictionary definition, the functional definition people use when they speak of cults is not a remark about their doctrines and beliefs, as if there's some threshold of weirdness at which a religion becomes a cult. Functionally speaking, people use the term "cult" in a pejorative sense to mean coercive and controlling religious groups that manipulate their members by various means.
For example, within Catholicism, there are religious orders, and the Opus Dei religious order is considered by many Catholics to be a cult within Catholicism because of some of the things they've done to their members and what they do to members who do not toe the line with their rules and directives. There are Christian churches who do not differ doctrinally from more mainstream denominations who are considered cults because of the coercive ways they manipulate their members (financially and otherwise), and there are also Christian churches that have extremely bizarre beliefs that do not coerce and manipulate their members. Additionally, some churches have "cults of personality" where the leader or head pastor is utterly idolized, as if he were God's anointed and is not to be questioned. That sort of unquestioning loyalty to a person no matter what crimes or abuses they commit would qualify as a cult, along with coercive and manipulative behavior.
I can't speak for the practices of Mormonism today, but the first few generations of Mormonism definitely behaved like a cult. They had their own militias, and their leaders were not to be questioned. Dissenters were smeared and threatened with violence, and too many died suspicious deaths to be coincidence. I'll let ex-mormons speak about the LDS ("latter day saints") church today, on whether or not it is a cult in the common understanding of the term.
**EDIT**:
Johnny Harris (who is ex-Mormon) did a video on what Mormons actually believe. You may find some of what is exposed informative.
#Johnny Harris | [The REAL story of the Mormon church](https://youtu.be/hUW7j9GmXjI)
Ancient Paths TV (a Presbyterian ministry ) talks about the criminal side of the founder of Mormonism:
#Ancient Paths TV | [Joseph Smith: Behind the Mask](https://youtu.be/MsVM89lM0tQ)
The early Mormon church operated like organized crime with a religion overlaid on it. The core group was into financial fraud and counterfeiting. And to solidly qualify for the “cult” label, they threatened and murdered dissenters and whistleblowers who spoke out against abuses such as Joseph Smiths serial adultery (before polygamy became part of their doctrinally accepted practice).
Exmo here.
I would describe it as a cult full of well-meaning (though often quite judgemental) people who are by-and-large *trying* to be good christians, but who are being lied to and tricked by church leadership--other than the contingent of leadership that actually believes, that is.
That's how I'd classify my own parents. They genuinely, truly love Jesus and want to follow him with their whole hearts, but they both came from abusive homes and they got snapped up into the Mormon church while they were young and vulnerable. And now, because of the information control exercised by the church, it's all but impossible to get them to read anything critical of Mormonism.
(Also, a deep dive into LDS (Mormon) history makes it very obvious that the whole thing has been a con from the beginning. There were never any gold plates, nor Urim and Thummim, it was always a peepstone in a hat, and a fraud who was determined to never work an honest day in his life and to bang as many underage girls as he could.)
At the time, I thought it was "anti-Mormon lies", and it was a gut punch when I found out that that South Park episode was more historically accurate than what I'd been taught all my life.
My wife's parents spend like 30 hours a week at the temple and seem like judgmental assholes. Well meaning but still assholes. I always point to that South Park episode because it's such a true depiction of it all. Comedic, but fairly accurate.
Agreed 100%. I've observed the same since moving to Utah and I've seen it in my own Mormon in-laws. My MIL a raised Catholic and they tried to tell her her mother was in Purgatory. If she became Mormon, she could just do a baptism for the dead for her and all would be "well."
Yea I am Mormon. Stopped going the day I turned 18. The reason I am still Mormon is because there is process to “quit” but they don’t allow it to happen and will just excommunicate you. That process comes with a stigma that you are pedophile or similar. Other than that it’s not much different than other churches except for the amount of content. Sunday is gone cause church lasts about 4 hours. I also had to go to church before school and it was so early school wasn’t open when we got there and we would have to wait in the cafeteria. I hated my experience there but to be fair I would have hated it no matter what religion my family was. Just not my thing.
Well I agree all churches are cults but I could physically leave. Anyone can physically leave. I am just on their registry or list or whatever as being a Mormon even though I haven’t been associated with it in 32 years. Just pointing out there is definitely a difference between Mormons and Scientologists
For what it's worth, my wife and I both resigned from the Mormon cult. Used the online attorney who files the demands to the church that they remove our records.
No muss, no fuss, and no excommunication. (They're welcome to excommunicate me at any time. The church excommunicated a man simply because he campaigned to always have a parent or guardian present for interviews with local church leaders, where they have traditionally happened with only the leader and the child, with the leader asking sexually explicit and detailed questions of a minor. That's not a religion led by any kind of good I want to worship. Getting kicked out by such an organization would be a badge of honor and morals to me.)
Personally, I knew it was over for me the day I realized I was using my own internal moral compass to determine if I felt the church was making moral choices. When you use your own thoughts to determine if a religion is moral, that is a failed religion. Every single time the Mormon church had the opportunity to guide society and improve it, they've made the choice to side with bigotry. Black people couldn't hold the priesthood forever. Women have no authority in the church and are quite literally taught to submit to their husbands. Gay people, even those out of the church, should not be legally allowed to marry. The list goes on, and the Mormon church goes MAGA at every opportunity.
Cult
And for those in the know, you can probably guess where my username came from. (Hyrum is my super-secret heaven-only name.) Cult
That's pretty much me point by point.
Funny story: They called and I said "I'd like my name removed from the member list, please."
They said "Please send a formal request in a letter to your local bishop."
I did.
It came back unopened two weeks later, stamped "Unclaimed. Return to sender."
Passive aggressive much?
When I moved out of state the Mormons in Texas started coming to my house. I had to call my mom and tell her that I was being nice but I wasn’t going to be nice anymore and what I do will look badly on her. That was the last time they contacted me. They wanted to send home teachers to my house.
I think you're forgetting about baptisms for the dead and other secret temple ceremonies. As are most of the people commenting here. I too was raised in the church and participated in some of these ceremonies. Not to even mention the fact that tithing is required in that if you don't pay tithing, you can't get your temple recommend. If you can't get your temple recommend, you can't go to the celestial kingdom. The threat of being separated from your family for all of time and eternity is pretty coercive imo. You can just leave the church, that's true. But that doesn't mean the church won't send congregants and missionaries to your door to love bomb you and try to guilt you into coming back. That doesn't mean that your family and friends won't shun you. All of this feels pretty cult like to me.
Again, I said churches are cults, I can’t stand organized religion. Honestly forgot about baptisms for the dead that is some whacky shit. In case people aren’t aware…you can pray to your dead relatives and if they are willing, they accept your invite to join the church. Since they have no body you are their stand in and get baptized for them. It’s run like an auction where the guy doing the baptisms goes so fast you can’t understand him and just quick words dunk quick words dunk.
Edit: OK I may have downplayed how whacky they are, I admit you are right, it’s different than most churches.
Didn’t they do this to a bunch of dead celebrities too?
Found a link [Mormon baptism of Holocaust victims draw ire](https://apnews.com/article/992dd887f7b948d0a08055dff0363aa4)
Yeah, they were baptizing Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth along with all those Holocaust victims. Anne Frank is in there too.
As an ex-Mormon, it always struck me as odd that everyone did temple work (baptisms for the dead) (cult) for the heroes of history. Those peeps are already going to heaven. Why is no one doing temple work for the evil people who need it most?
It's always been about chasing clout, both baptizing dead celebrities and handing out BoM for no reason than to brag at the next priesthood meeting.
God, I'm so glad I didn't believe in gods any longer.
Cult
Don’t know the degree of excommunication you are talking here. But I would say that if all your families and friends who remain in the religion are told to cut ties with you when you leave, or they will be punished in someway, it is a cult.
If you look at the BITE\* model of authoritarian control (which is used to classify cults), the LDS (Mormon) church ticks most of the boxes. LDS missionary life ticks even more of the boxes.
That doesn't mean that all Mormons are bad people, or that none of them have a healthy relationship with the religion, but in my experience Mormonism crosses boundaries into controlling your life that a religion should not.
Mormonism dictates:
* What you can drink (no coffee/tea/alcohol)
* What underwear you wear
* Whether you're "worthy" of wearing said underwear (yes, really)
* What clothing you wear (it had better cover your "garments", AKA the special underwear)
* Who you should listen to (the current church president has said "never take counsel from those who do not believe", direct quote)
* Who you can marry (sorry gays, you're outta luck!)
* Who is allowed to attend your wedding (I was not allowed to attend my older brother's wedding. I had to sit outside!)
* Your family structure (for most of its history, in Mormon weddings, the husband would covenant to obey God, and the wife would covenant to obey her husband)
If you want to decide for yourself whether Mormonism is a cult, you can watch a secretly-recorded Endowment ceremony (AKA a big part of what goes on in Mormon temples) on YouTube. Channel name is NewNameNoah
\*Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, Emotion Control
The underwear really gets too me. If God wanted people to wear them, He'd have given people garments that didn't give them yeast infections and other skin issues.
Nor would He tell people to dress up like demented chefs in green aprons in the temple, or have a secret Holy of Holies where church leaders are told their place in the Celestial Kingdom is assured no matter WHAT they do on Earth from that point on.
Don't get me started on how Joseph Smith and Brigham Young basically twisted Christianity into something that would "force" him to have a harem of teenage girls. They had an abortionist living down the road.
oh and dont forget when you need to destroy your garments because they are old, dont fit or whatever, that you need to cut out the little x's that are where the nipples would sit for...fuck I cant remember the reasoning behind it. But its like...fucking why though!?
This should be higher up. "Cult" shouldn't merely mean "is weird" because what's weird religiously is all a matter of perspective. "Cults" have *control* of their members, that's the big defining element.
My extended family is all Mormon (I am not) so I've learned a lot about the religion over the years. They don't tell you what underwear you can wear. You *can't* wear the temple garments unless you've done an endowment ceremony in the temple, but Mormons who haven't done that can wear whatever underwear they want. They also don't really dictate what clothes you wear. If you do wear the garments they need to be covered, but if you don't then it's kind of whatever. I've seen my cousins wear tiny shorts and tank tops and no one batted an eye. Of course you need to dress modestly in church, but that's pretty standard practice for any church. I've also been to plenty of Mormon weddings.
I still think it's kind of a cultish religion and just pretty weird in general. I acknowledge that my family might be in a more lax church community, but I've had other Mormon friends over the years (I don't live near my family) that have reinforced what I pointed out.
>endowment ceremony in the temple,
A required ceremony to go to heaven for Mormons btw. Most Mormons do it when they turn 18. So, from then on they do dictate what underwear you wear (or face eternal consequences)
> If you do wear the garments they need to be covered
IIRC they recently started making shorter ones, but back when I was Mormon (more than a decade ago, so bear with me lol) the garments were really long. I think it used to be much more restrictive than it is now... But don't quote me on this part.
>I've also been to plenty of Mormon weddings.
I'm 95% sure that the actual wedding part (according to the religion, not the law, of course) has to be done inside a Mormon temple, where only "worthy" Mormons can go. I'm sure some people do a normal wedding and a Mormon one, or something like that.. but growing up Mormon I was never allowed to attend any actual weddings because I wasn't old enough to be "worthy". Any non-Mormons or kids had to just come to the after party.
Overall growing up Mormon, especially in Utah, I'd say it's extremely cult-y. Especially how non-members are treated. (In my experience, of course)
Don't they believe in three "levels" of heaven? I remember my grandma telling me she was sad I wouldn't be in the celestial kingdom and when I asked her to elaborate she told me that because I'm a good person I'd still end up in one of the three heavens/kingdoms but not the one God lives in. Or something like that.
You're right that there is a ceremony for those who are allowed in the temple, but most of my family who qualify for that go to the temple on their own to do that and then have a traditional wedding and reception sometime after. I assume they do it this way so all their friends/family can be part of the celebration. I didn't even know about the temple ceremony part until I was in my late teens.
My family is in Idaho so maybe it's not quite the same vibe. My mom left the church before I was born and so did most of her siblings and lots of cousins and we are still welcomed and treated well by the rest of the family. I remember my great-aunt scolding my grandma once for trying to get me to go to seminary school. She said something about how "family is family" and it doesn't matter if I'm LDS or not, I'm still loved. My great-aunt is a feisty old thing. I should call her 😆
There are 3 "levels to heaven" Celestial, Telestial and Terrestrial. Basically if you are in the celestial kingdom, you are most worthy and essentially become your own god where you can create your own world or some stupid bullshit. Telestial is for the "good" people who made decent decisions in life. Terrestrial is for people who haven't accepted the gospel, but others in heaven come down to preach the word of god and you can accept it and move up a tier or not and just stay there. Thats my basic recollection of it, I could be missing things, its been fucking years.
I was sealed to my parents when I was around 8. My dad is not my biological father but he adopted me when I was 3 and he has always been dad. They needed to write to the prophet, and get special permission so that we could be sealed. I had to be in a completely white dress, so did my mom, and my dad was in white as well. We knelt at an alter in the middle of a room where the walls were all mirrors, so when you seal yourselves to each other its a physical metaphor how you will be together forever and it keeps going no matter where you look or something. Yea thats a creep vibe of 10 there sir.
Pretty spot on, but you mixed up Terrestrial and Telestial. The order doesn’t make sense tbh. Growing up, I was taught that Telestial is basically Earth without all the bad things, Terrestrial is like the traditional Christian concept of heaven, and Celestial is where God and Jesus live, along with the most righteous who have made all of the necessary covenants, specifically, being sealed to your spouse. The three tiers are also often compared to the sun (celestial), moon (terrestrial), and stars (Telestial) in terms of “glory/brightness”.
Sorry for the long ramble lol, I’ve got a lifetime of knowledge (or a childhood at least) and it all came tumbling out
That sounds more like Mormonism outside of Utah. Inside Utah it's VERY cult like, and they try to control everything including local politics and whether non believers can buy alcohol.
I think that model is kind of silly, and not just because when you look it up it appears with a big fat TM next to it. You would be able to make similar criticisms about any civilized society. Being a functional adult means being in control of what information you consume, your emotions, how you behave and think.
It depends on how you define a cult. The silly things like the temple undergarments, caffeine abstinence, the magic hat with the tablets that only John whoever can see, the obviously made up weird rules. The weird beliefs are weird but they’re absolutely not the red flags of a cult. Every religion has just as much bat shit crazy lore as Mormonism.
But some of the basic red flags to look for are how they treat people who have left the church and how they try to isolate members from nonmembers. In both of those measures, Mormonism is 100% a cult. Ex Mormons are straight up cut off from their families, and they’re taught that the non LDS world hates them.
If you really want to learn about a religion, you should speak to its adherents, not its enemies. Reddit, in general, is one of the most anti-religious communities you'll find - I would say, especially when it comes to Mormons.
LDS church doctrine, beliefs, and teachings are not secret by any means. Go to the source.
There's some but it feels kinda insignificant overall for considering it a cult since the rituals are so brief, they hold importance of course but I don't really feel they're harmful? I think what was the most cult-like experience I had was the lesson I got as a kid that true joy only exists when you're in the church and that if you're out you can't experience that positive of an emotion and are more susceptible to negative emotions and that felt odd to me since I felt kinda numb but I was trying hard to obey and I'd see people outside the church seem so happy and that they weren't that different. I kinda felt guilty for not being joyful while at church but other than that I think the fault lied in my own understanding of the lessons I was taught there rather than the church itself.
Interesting. A lot of what you're describing is just...religion - a set of beliefs and doctrine that followers believe will lead to peace, joy, and happiness, which in turn would mean that NOT following that doctrine would lead to, you guessed it, less peace, joy, and happiness. Most of reddit will you that, by definition, is a cult. It's not.
If I were you, I'd try to not get hung up on trying to determine "is it a cult, yes or no" and focus on what makes you most happy. There are people who are happier in a religion and people who aren't.
As far as Christian religions are concerned, flowing Christ's example and teachings is the path to peace, happiness, and joy. That entails, at a most basic level, loving God and loving your neighbor. And the best way to love God is by serving His fellow children. There are people outside of religion altogether who live these principles and feel those blessings and many inside religion who don't.
> if you're out you can't experience...
This is precisely the mind control cults use. The threat that life outside the group will be worse, more dangerous, etc. This is exactly the type of teaching that traps people in cults.
The idea that _only we_ have the true answers and _only we_ know true joy. That only one group has the ultimate truth or the ultimate answer is a feature of cults.
I grew up in a cult and questioned. I left at 19 and ran thousands of miles away. Best decision I ever made.
I suggest understanding what makes a cult:
https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model-pdf-download/
https://freedomofmind.com/search_gcse/?q=Mormon
That doesn’t make any sense at all. If you want accurate information, you need to evaluate ALL the information you can get, both from adherents and critics. There is a *substantial* amount of important information about the church that members won’t tell you, and will only admit if pressed on it.
My mom refuses to admit that she mimicked slitting her own throat on her wedding day in the temple. My aunt denies that Joseph Smith married 33 other women without the knowledge of his first wife. I was a Mormon missionary and told people earning $2/day that all their tithing money goes to run the church and provide humanitarian aid. People are not forthcoming about their religion when it's embarassing.
Yes. You should only read 5 star reviews made by company employees when buying something on Amazon. That makes perfect sense [to mormons I guess].
Seriously though, r/mormon or r/latterdaysaints will probably both give you reasonable answers. The second is a curated forum for believers, but the first is open to believers and nonbelievers.
If you want a higher level of understanding seek out some professors of religion who have studied this for a while. I am certain you can get at least a few to talk with you casually.
ExMormon here - yes, ish. Mormonism hits all of the key points of a cult. The new fancy term for that is high demand religion but fun fact those mean the same thing. For example, there are secret handshakes you have to learn in the temple that are based on Masonic rituals because Joseph Smith wanted so desperately to be a Mason but they would not let him join.
Speaking of Joseph Smith, the man was a literal con man who has a criminal record because he would use these stones that he called seer Stones, just rocks he found, to "find" treasure for people. Then he took those same stones, maybe not the exact same rocks but the same concept, and said these are actually called the urim and thumim and I'm going to make spectacles out of them AKA put a rock in a hat, don't ask, and I can now translate this language called reformed Egyptian, which does not exist by the way, but no one else can see the golden plates except for him and translate it into the history of the ancient Central Americans. He plagiarized a lot of books to come up with the BoM, and then all of a sudden he needs to get a lot more power and he does that by sending his highest ranking members off on missions so he can literally steal their wives. Sometimes those girls were under the age of 15. He had I believe, I might be wrong on this exact number, seven wives under that age. So, knowing that's how that religion was founded... and then Brigham Young was the second in command after Joseph Smith was rightfully murdered. He is by and large one of the worst humans to ever have Any kind of power in America up to today. You do the math. If you have more questions of the founding of this cult/it's attempts to pretend they're not a scam, feel free to ask!
Technically, a "cult" is a religious system that runs on secrets: you join, you learn a secret; you advance levels or whatever, you learn more secrets. Religions like Christianity or Islam are open; while there is a lot you can learn on your faith journey, and learning is definitely part of the process, there's no information that's deliberately withheld for initiates only.
Mormonism definitely had its share of "members only" sorts of information, so in a very technical sense, yeah, it's a cult; but it's probably about as open as cults get.
There isn’t really a widespread accepted definition of a ‘cult’.
Whether or not something semantically is classified as a cult isn’t really important. There’s religion, there’s cults, there’s cults that have nothing to do with religion, and there’s some overlap and gray area around all of those.
Generally, whether or not something a cult often relies on how absurd you think a group of people’s beliefs are. But that’s a pretty subjective definition, and different people will reach different conclusions.
You’re mistaken.
Cults are defined by control, not by secrets. For example, the Masons aren’t a cult, despite working almost entirely on so-called secret knowledge.
In fact, the definition of what a cult exactly is is pretty ambiguous because it’s hard to pin down. What one person might call a cult another person will call serious faith or belief.
But cults absolutely not defined by having secrets or not. Although many cults are secretive that’s true, and they often do have different ways that you can find increasing levels of spiritual or other connection or power. But they don’t necessarily have to have secrets. They just have to have a lot of control over practitioners lives.
ETA to acknowledge the existence of non-religious cults per the comment below.
Cults aren't religious systems. Some cults are political or organized around something else that's not religion. Secrets are a component to cults, but what defines a cult is not secrecy. What defines a cult is the level of destructive control it has over its members.
Fair point. I think “cults” typically associated with religious or spiritual traditions because it’s pretty easy to create a delusional system of belief and set followers up as “special” using religion. You can do it with politics, and people absolutely do, but it’s a little bit more complicated and less common.
Can you please share with the class how open they are about things like what they invest their money in AKA shopping malls or why they require specifically women to wear the most covered clothing or even why the garments are required? Yeah sure. If you are a Mormon in good standing you might know those things but that is not what is open. Open means everyone can know and easily access that information.
Imagine someone today came along and said hey guys I was shown new revelations about Christianity in these amazing golden tablets. Those break and are gone but I wrote it all down and will tell you. It’s some pretty wild stuff and we may have to escape to a new state but this is like Christ +.
Everyone would say no thanks David Koresh or Charles Manson but Joseph Smith came at the right decade and place. They also hide most of their ways they still deviate extremely from Christianity to appear as another denomination.
They follow people when they stop going to church, usually through their families, and update contact info and proceed to contact them about where the nearest Temple is so they can come back. I’ve known 3 people this happened to and all had to send a cease and desist for them to stop. They also keep children and young or vulnerable people in line by threatening them to either follow the teachings of the church or risk being shunned from their family and community for life. Not even most christian’s do that. Source: College in UT, dated 2 ex-mormons, friends with 3 ex-mormons.
ETA: I think my response says enough but to be clear, very cultish behavior IMO.
Non-Mormon Utahn here:
I've got a lot of thoughts about this stuff, but I'll keep it short.
Mormon's are big on family and keeping the family together. At the core, their values are great. Are they a bit cult-ish? Sure. But they largely get a bad label because of misinformation and the extremists out there that still practice archaic beliefs
Would I ever become a Mormon? Fuck no
But y'all outside of the state need to calm down on them a bit
I am not a Mormon, but I know and am good friends with several. They have some cult like aspects to the religion. There are people who will check in on you every week. You are supposed to wear a certain underwear. We went to a wedding and we were only allowed to be there for part of it. The rest of it was private and Mormon only.
Those things aside, they do not have many of the negative aspects people typically associate with cults. They can be friends with anyone. They can quit the church (one of my friends did). They should not do anything outside of church / being home with family on Sunday, but I knew plenty who cheated it with no consequence.
They are genuinely nice people and have strong support systems to help each other through hard times. One of the Mormon families I know had a daughter who had several babies with different fathers. Her parents supported her rather than shun. Another family has a daughter who is trans. The church officially doesn't approve of that. Her parents still love and associate with her.
I don't think calling them a cult is fair just because they have a stricter way of living.
They're just a cult that has survived long enough to become a mainstream religion. Go read about the history of their founding and beliefs. Its absolutely bonkers. They also have a long history of murdering people who didnt agree with them, and giving their young daughters to leaders of the church for their child bride polygamy.
Yes, Mormonism is a high control environment that restricts its members freedom. This post goes on a great deal dissecting the controlling behaviors
[https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/6xcgf6/the\_lds\_church\_seems\_to\_use\_the\_bite\_model\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/6xcgf6/the_lds_church_seems_to_use_the_bite_model_a/)
The time absorbed by the church, the implied mission requirement to bring you in to the "sunk cost" perspective, the isolation if you leave, the financial commitment required to be in "good standing, and the secret rituals all scream of a cult.
I’ve been Mormon for 60 years and I have come to clearly see a bunch of the culti-ness. The major give away is the oft repeated edict that criticizing the church leaders is a sin, even if the criticism is correct. The other is the firmly held belief that the top 15 leaders are all “prophets, seers and revelators”, in spite of an absolute dearth of prophesies, seeing into the future, or revelations. It must be said that the church largely teaches and instills good values, helps build strong families, generally takes care of their own, and the vast majority of members (in my experience) are nice people and good neighbors. But a real serious problem is there is no way out with your dignity and reputation intact. I know this is true in many religions, but I find it unforgivable that the church tacitly encourages people to ostracize members who choose to leave, regardless of the reason, and treat them as “less than” apostates. Fashioning themselves as being focused on the family, but then being the catalyst for exploding families is the very height of hypocrisy. They could fix this, but I’m not holding my breath.
I love when “regular” Christians call out Mormonism as a cult not realizing that Mormonism is just a fan fiction of “regular” Christianity which is a fan fiction of Judaism
Welcome to Reddit wherr they are all cults.
Mormonism / Latter Day Saints are pretty cultish becaue they are fairly new, have some extra-wacky beliefs, and also mix business with the church to a high degree.
I would like to add in my two cents as well. I have seen a few non-members and former members share their insights, and I would like to do the same, as a current member of the Mormon church. I am a somewhat recent convert to the church. My faith journey is personal and sacred to me, but my life since becoming a Mormon has been so much better than before. I have a very real sense of peace and purpose in my life that I did not have before. My attachment to the church is founded on Jesus Christ, my savior and redeemer, not Joseph Smith or any other man. The Mormon church has been a tremendous blessing in my life, and I am grateful to be a part of it. I am happy to answer any questions, etc in PM's. Thank you!
I have opportunities to serve others, both within and without my congregation. The theology of the Mormon church teaches that I should love others as Jesus loves me, and selfless service to others is how I interpret that commission. In serving others, I find more purpose in my day to day activities. When I meet new people, I try to see how I can minister to them as Jesus would. When I prepare my meals for the week, I think about who I might share it with. And so forth.
In this way, I find more purpose in my life and the things I do, instead of being rote and routine, now take on special meaning as I try to love and serve others. I know when God is pleased with me when I feel peace in my heart.
Ahh, I see. The purpose of community and serving the community. To me this is what the church should be about. Jesus taught love for the whole of the community and too many people forget this.
I hope you have a blessed and happy day!
Part of the cult like nature is due to the novelty.
They believe that the Book of Mormon was written on gold plates buried in New York and that their founder received a vision telling him to translate said plates in 1827.
It's also particularly implausible seeming even by the standards of religious texts. Because the Book of Mormon has to involve both America so it's founder isn't unveiled as a fraud and the biblical times to connect it to Christianity, it tells us about a group that allegedly traveled from Israel to the US in 600 BC and about their visions of Jesus.
Because of its focus on America it predicts things about America like that the Native people will rise up and throw off white people and rule over us which clearly haven't happened but probably seemed more plausible when more of them were alive in 1827.
It's one thing when a religion makes fantastical claims about something that happened before recorded history. It's another thing to make more recent and obviously falsifiable claims.
Therefore, they have to be more assertive in their indoctrination and recruiting.
That said, maybe in 1,800 years, when most current history is forgotten, Mormonism will become more like other religions and less culty.
Nothing. Being a Mormon is no more of a cult than any other religion. They are all cults. Not "cult qualities", but cults. They all use the same methods to get and keep members and get get as much money out of them as they can. If you were going to say the difference between a cult and a religion, I'm not sure one could really come up with a difference that was meaningful.
It was the Scientology of the 1800's. On a scale of 1-10, and Scientology is a 10, mormons are a solid 9.5 and Jehovah's Witnesses are a solid 9.9. If you have heard about anything that happens behind closed doors in the temples, they earn that 9.5. You need to learn handshakes. They legitimately believe that when Jesus resurrected, he came to the US with a bunch of israelites who became native americans.
Look up some of the history about it too. It's fucking bonkers how mormonites would show up places, weird shit happens, and everyone kicks them out. Illinois famously had their "mormon extermination order".
It qualifies as a cult under the BITE model, but it also kinda varies because exactly what’s taught varies from place to place and the culture can be different depending on where you are and stuff. While its members are on missions, it dials the cult tactics up to 11 for them. It definitely not the cult-est religion out there, but it’s definitely one for the most part.
I went on a Mormon mission and later worked at the MTC (missionary training centre). As a missionary I had no control over where I was sent and I was moved every three to six months with only a few hours notice. I could only contact my family by written letter once a week, two phone calls a year. My family never knew if I’d been moved to another area until I wrote them to say so. Lots of mail went missing for this reason. At the MTC it was my job to keep missionaries focussed on their studies and to ignore all the home sickness and urge to contact family and girlfriends etc.
I have had friends who were mormon and I got a bit on insight and he told me a few things. They are much more alienating and hostile to ppl who leave the church, to where much of the time it can break the family up. You can lose friends etc. He happened to be one of the ppl who left the church. Also dont mormons pay "tiding"? Like you have to pay money to the church? But they dont really do anything crazy otherwise.
Youre also encouraged to make friends and marry within the church. So you can see how this problem amplifies, ppl leaving lose *a lot* in their life
I would give it a 6.5/10 on the cult scale
As an exmormon who was Mormon in an area of the country that is majority southern Baptist, it never felt cultish. If anything, rhe southern baptists seemed hyperfocused on minding everyone else's activities for dessert.
Everything people mention in here as a sign of being s cult. You couldn't get away with in any church and expect to remain a member in good standing. Want to go against the preacher of a church for some reason? You're gonna find yourself on the outs and shunned and just may need to go find a new church.
Lds is much more like the mcdonalds of church's. Every one is supposed to be the same. Because there isn't a preacher of the church, just rotating leader chosen every year or two from the congregation. They even get a vote of confirmation from the congregation.
Yes they tell their members they're going to the worst he'll if they leave the church. But most Christian churches also preach about turning your back on faith.
I dont think they're that much different than any other church or religion.
>STUPID ANSWER HERE:
The Cult is only labelled bad if the Dear Leader forgets to lock the basement, painting production stops, and customers find out why they can't buy paintings of the Dear Leader anymore.
Source: Call him Kevin
I don't see a difference between Mormonism and Catholicism in terms of fanaticism.
The fervour is the same, and they both exile people who dare to criticize or go against minor infractions.
Not to mention, they both have a money grab to them - no different than Scientology, and the origin story is equally as nonsensical.
Objectively, all of these religions start as a cult until they hit a critical mass and become "accepted"
The question of whether Mormonism is a cult is a matter of debate and perspective. Some people consider Mormonism to be a cult due to its unique origins, practices, and authoritarian structure, while others see it as a legitimate Christian denomination.
Mormonism, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), has some characteristics that are commonly associated with cults, such as:
1. Authoritarianism: The church has a strict hierarchy and expects members to follow the guidance of its leaders.
2. Isolationism: Mormons are encouraged to prioritize their relationships with fellow church members and to avoid outside influences.
3. Unique beliefs and practices: Mormonism has distinctive doctrines and rituals that differ from mainstream Christianity.
4. High level of commitment: Mormons are expected to adhere to a strict code of conduct and to make significant time and financial commitments to the church.
However, Mormonism also shares many characteristics with mainstream Christian denominations, such as:
1. A large and widespread membership
2. A well-organized institutional structure
3. A focus on family and community values
4. Engagement in humanitarian work and community service
Ultimately, whether or not to label Mormonism as a cult is a matter of personal opinion and depends on how one defines a cult. It's important to approach the topic with nuance and to recognize that Mormonism is a complex and multifaceted religious movement.
Things that make Mormonism more culty than mainstream non-fundamentalist Christianity
1. anything that’s anti-mormon is considered to be inspired of the devil
2. Anything the leaders say is considered to be a commandment from God
3. they control believers’ underwear
4. they control what congregations believers are allowed to attend
5. believers are assigned friends
Cult can be defined as "great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work"
Under this definition. The following could be classified as a cult:
- Catholicism
- Mormonism
- Apple, Inc.
- GameStop
- America
- Democratic Party
- Conservatism
- Maoism
- Socrates
- Star Wars
- Lord Helix
- 🧿
- 🗿
- Capitalism
- Masonry
- Mr. Un
More cult-like than mainstream Christian denominations (orthodox and its variants, Catholicism, baptists, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc..,) but not as cult-like compared to a lot of small Christian denominations and other weird religions.
Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Unification Church are popular examples. The Family International and the Palmarian Catholic Church are smaller, but still prominent, Christian offshoots. Theres many more but I’m not incredibly well versed in it :)
Very much.
Current and past in-laws are Mormons. No idea how that happened.
This round of in-laws are worse.
When you are part of the church it's essentially for life. Your parents add you to a registry and Mormon missionaries will harass you at least once a year.
There is also a prayer list within the church and if some family member tells the whole damn organization your business, all your Mormon neighbors find out about it. Said family member will hand out your address even.
It's not as bad as it was, but decades ago the Mormon church didn't like Mormon kids playing with non-Mormon kids.
There is also a lot going on with the church buying up houses and Mormons who don't pay tithes being allowed into the temples but this post would get really long if I went over every particular.
I'd opine that a lot of what makes people feel like Mormonism is a 'cult' is just that it \*seems\* weird because it's different from what they consider "mainstream" religion.
A lot of the comments on here stress things that people see in Mormonism that they feel make it different from mainstream Christianity, but from my POV there's definitely those same elements in the Christianity they're used to - but the inherent biases in the worldview of someone raised in that faith make it very difficult to see how similar it is.
On the cultiness scale, it's below scientology, but still above mainstream Christianity.
I’d put it a bit below JW too
Agreed. Based on personal experience, I think JW is one of the worst 🤮
They are truly awful and reading about them and their beliefs keeps me in sick satisfaction with how nuts they are and I can't stop.
I bought my house from Jehovah’s Witnesses. They claim to be honest and whatnot, but that’s bull. They hid about $80,000 worth of defects that our inspector didn’t even see because it was so well done (and obviously done - like a new layer of drywall on an entire wall in a bedroom to hide the fact that there was a crack that leaked - just needed it to look pretty enough to sell - mold everywhere). Fuck those pricks.
Curious how stuff like that works, can you sue for that or no
Not in my state. Well, you can, but it’ll take forever and cost about $50k.
Worked in a hospital and was warned about the "church" elders. Crazy.
Yeah the "Hospital Liaison Committee" is a JW gestapo that makes sure you don't agree to a blood transfusion to save* your or your child's life. Edited but wanted to keep original because the joke below is friggn great *don't agree to a blood transfusion to Dave your or your child's life.
Fuckin Dave... Always ruining everything.
My late husband was an ex-JW, and we got married on purpose just before he had a major surgery, specifically so that I, not his JW mother, would be his next of kin for medical questions. JWs are fucking weird.
They love sexually abusing children. It’s really fucking weird.
The Mormon church didn’t let me join the neighborhood Boy Scouts because we weren’t members of the church
Do you mind giving some of the fun facts regarding Jehova’s Witnesses? JW is actually one of the few that I haven’t done much research on. I’m curious to know.
Jesus return as King in 1914, kicked Satan out of Heaven and is now ruling. Human never saw any of this because it happened invisibly. Only 144000 will go to Heaven to rule over the earth, where the rest of the JW will be living in a restored paradise. Jesus is only the son of God and not God in any way. Every member is encouraged to go out reaching (though less so these days) The world will end any day now ("we are in the last of the last days"). First government will attack/ destroy all religion except JW and declare peace and security. Then notice JWs, which they somehow missed and start to attack them. That is when God (Jehovah) steps in and destroys all nations and bad people. (basically all non-JW, though they change this recently to maybe some non-JW is survive too) America and Britain is the King of the South and Russia is the King of the North (from Daniel's prophecies), and what Russia is doing is a sign of the end times. Up till last year December, men were not allow to have beards, and women were not allow to wear slacks to church. It is currently going though a change, to seem more main stream, but are very much a cult. (i am an exJW, visit r/exjw for more facts)
My girlfriend is an ex JW. Some were going door to door in my neighborhood a few weeks ago and I answered, not knowing. She came upstairs and looked out the window after they left and was APPALLED that the woman in the group was wearing slacks.
If she doesnt have any PTSD from her time in the cult, show her [this picture ](https://preview.redd.it/governing-body-update-4-conventions-prisons-v0-dzz7la2h6v7d1.png?width=564&format=png&auto=webp&s=df399205fcd6421d57b92b584a5db2b1cadb9368)and she what she thinks. (its one of the current leaders of JW, having a beard which would be very surprising to any exJW that is not following the updates of JW.)
When i was a kid the JW's started telling people, STAY ALIVE UNTIL 75, they were saying that was the year the tribulation was coming. A bunch of the JW's went and bought expensive houses and cars and just maxed out their credit, my parents included. Guess what did not happen in 1975?
When I was younger (in the 80s/90s), it was taught that the end would come before all those that was alive in 1914 died off, so like maximum the year 2000 or soon there after. Spoilers, it didn't come then either. Now the have some weird 'overlapping generation' teaching which roughly point to 2035 as the final year. I guess we will have to wait and see. :D
They are a high control cult. One of the most dangerous at that: > In religions such as the JW, the religion controls the incoming information, behaviors, and emotions through dichotomous classifications and shunning. The fight to maintain a sense of control can lead to domination over family members and reliance on patriarchal values. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9803876/#:~:text=In%20religions%20such%20as%20the,and%20reliance%20on%20patriarchal%20values.
There's a good episode of The Aftermath with Leah Remini that covers off on this. IIRC, they believe that they are the chosen ones that will be given a spot in the afterlife when the rapture happens. And not just a spot, but literally sitting on some ship floating above the earth, able to Witness the destruction of the heathens remaining down below. They don't celebrate any holidays, including birthdays. They also have some sort of policy around shunning those that leave the faith. There was worse stuff on the program but I don't remember it well enough to recount here.
They don’t observe any holidays. No birthdays, Christmas, and so on. If you don’t follow the rules, you get kicked out (disfellowshipped) and shunned. This is incredibly hard on everyone. And the blood thing…they’re not allowed to accept any kind of transfusions or blood products. However, in a hospital where I worked, a JW allowed FFP (fresh frozen plasma) to be given as it wasn’t a “blood” product. Go figure.
I grew up in it. At school whenever they did the pledge of allegiance i had to step out into the hallway. Someone's birthday, hallway, holiday related things, hallway. So blatantly setting your child apart from all the other kids was just a recipe for lifelong anxiety. Oh and no sports, which i did behind there back but really? No sports?
They strongly discourage higher education, and encourage going into the trades, especially contruction-related. They're also very insular, and aren't supposed to associate with non-members. Their religious teachings are pretty odd, too. They believe that the archangel Michael is actually Jesus, or vice versa. Hubby tried explaining to me and it made no sense. They also believe that 144,000 people will get into heaven. That's it. I asked what happens to the people who get bumped off this list, and he told me that after all the apocalypse stuff happens, the JWs who didn't make it into heaven will just be resurrected on earth to rebuild.
This is called bias but I’m not disagreeing
Genuine question: Where does 7th Day Adventist rank? I grew up in a Mormon town and they were all sort of creepy, especially to me who didn't go to church at all. There was one 7th Day Adventist girl at my school who was totally normal to me, *and* who the Mormons all loved. Been trying to piece this one together for years.
She was probably hot
Oh majorly I was down bad asf for her in 8th grade
They are crazy but they don’t shun people like the Mormons and JW do
but really only a bit.
They're pretty even imho
Tbh until now I thought JW was just another word for Mormon. TIL
I thought about including them
The ultimate grift is that the mormon church holds a hedge fund with 100 billion in it that the church quietly siphoned the tithing money into, and the poor people still keep sending in their tithing.
They're saving up for the colony ship to Tau Ceti.
They call it “fire insurance”🤢
I would note too the LDS now is the end result of a century of highly organized rebranding and reform to go from being a pariah religion at war with the U.S. to a major church and movement showcasing how "American" it is.
Yeah. What makes it a cult is that we still have the newspaper articles from when it was started showing all the shenanigans and scams the founders pulled. We would throw those founders in jail for crimes today without hesitation. It's documented that their religious text is completely fabricated and made up by a man and absolutely nothing Devine was involved. But millions of people believe it now, so it's a religion not a cult.
This is what kills me. People spending their whole lifetimes devoting it to some dude basically claiming to have pulled something out of a hat and very clearly just making shit up as he went along.
All just so he could have multiple wives too. Modern Mormons would rather we all forget that polygamy for church elders and their yes men was foundational in the early days, and that they weren't above murder, theft, and kidnapping young children while building their Great Salt promised land (see the Mountain Meadows massacre)
The bible is not actually more credible just because it's older and some details of its writing have been lost. Mormonism is more cult-like than mainstream Christianity because it exerts more control over how members live their lives, e.g. forcing people to go on recruiting missions and elders making major life decisions for younger members.
By time, every cult becomes an established and respected church. Christianity was a Jewish cult. In 500 years Scientology will be one of the many.
In catholic school I was taught that it is similar to a cult and its additional Bible chapters was false scripture.
Though, you could consider the New Testament "false scripture" when compared to Judaism.
Yea but the Mormons translated their Book of Abraham from an Egyptian scroll before we knew how to translate it. When we learned we realized that was not in fact what the scroll said. There’s fase and then there’s grifting.
Joseph Smith was the grifter's grifter. His whole thing was con artistry and fake treasure for gullible fools. He announced his religion was ~~polytheistic~~ polygamous after his wife caught him in bed with someone else.
Yeah it wasn't his first scam either. He had earlier been in trouble for claiming to have magic stones that could find gold.
Do you mean polygamist?
Yeah stupid typo. Although they are kinda polytheistic also from some angles.
Very true
and Quran...
Hey, nobody likes the competition.
Yeah. They are definitely heretics
I’m Mormon and I agree
I was raised by fundamentalist evangelicals and it was everything ex-Mormons describe as culty. When I was in it I was controlled down to what music I listened to. When I left I lost friends and family en masse. I don't know that cult is a good descriptor of any belief structure that isn't based around being married to a living cult leader or killing yourself for the belief.
Christianity is too big to be collectively called a cult. But almost all branches/denominations of it, individually, are. Genetically modified sceptic in YouTube has some good videos about identifying cults. 2 big factors I remember are being required to listen to specific music and being alienated by family if you leave.
Then you can’t apply that to most denominations, most churches are not so restrictive about music you can listen to and they won’t ostracize you if you leave the church for a different denomination or church community.
Ahh, but if you become atheist, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, etc...
Certainly you’ll lose friends but I think it’s more or less about you not going to the same gatherings so you end up losing those friends over time.
Excellent summation.
Former mormon here, agree 100%
I feel like this can probably be boiled down to a mathematical formula. The longer it's been since the founder of a religion has died the more it becomes a mainstream religion rather than a cult. It goes without saying that it the founder is still alive then it is definitely still a cult
I’d argue that all religion are cult like, and or major cult behavior. They just get a pass because they are large and mainstream.
How does it go? A cult is where the person on top knows it is bullshit. In a religion, all those people are dead.
What if the person on the top is truly delusional? Would that be a religion in that case or still a cult? I think it's more based on size, recency, and how harmful it is on the members.
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Christianity is basically a cult of Paul's writing nearly 80 years after Jesus lived and assembled into the Bible 300 years later. There are still Catholic Church records of the original 11 Apostles writings and they are sometimes drastically different than the New Testament Bible... so the church ignores them and Protestants don't even accept them as real.
Being more culty than mainstream Christianity is (to this little black duck) very culty indeed.
As a former momo, I’d say you’re spot on
I would say it's more of a cult than the other major religions because it's more centralized. The power structure has given the church more control in decisions involving politics and business. Compared to the Catholic church which has lost a lot of central power in the US during the last century.
The catholic church has certainly run out of favor with the public in the US but depending where you live, they still hold a lot of power. In my state Catholic Social Services gets millions in state contracts for social service programs.
Is central power more culty? Isn’t any group a religion…like a political movement that has more central power is more culty? Seems odd. Not sure that’s a defining cult quality.
Central power gives more direction. Cults can't really achieve results if there's too much independence in their organization. I would say for being a powerful and practical cult, centralized power is needed.
Hard disagree, if you're going by political control Islam exerts far more than Mormons could ever hope to achieve.
I was giving a more US centric answer. If we start moving to middle east and asia, Mormons have no power and Islam becomes a power. But there are multiple Islamic sects/schools/branches which would be competing against each other and we would compare those.
Islam would fail hard at centralization, though the individual faction can be very nutty indeed. (In fact, it seems like most faction in my country.)
I'd say Christianity has more power than Islam.
Apart from any dictionary definition, the functional definition people use when they speak of cults is not a remark about their doctrines and beliefs, as if there's some threshold of weirdness at which a religion becomes a cult. Functionally speaking, people use the term "cult" in a pejorative sense to mean coercive and controlling religious groups that manipulate their members by various means. For example, within Catholicism, there are religious orders, and the Opus Dei religious order is considered by many Catholics to be a cult within Catholicism because of some of the things they've done to their members and what they do to members who do not toe the line with their rules and directives. There are Christian churches who do not differ doctrinally from more mainstream denominations who are considered cults because of the coercive ways they manipulate their members (financially and otherwise), and there are also Christian churches that have extremely bizarre beliefs that do not coerce and manipulate their members. Additionally, some churches have "cults of personality" where the leader or head pastor is utterly idolized, as if he were God's anointed and is not to be questioned. That sort of unquestioning loyalty to a person no matter what crimes or abuses they commit would qualify as a cult, along with coercive and manipulative behavior. I can't speak for the practices of Mormonism today, but the first few generations of Mormonism definitely behaved like a cult. They had their own militias, and their leaders were not to be questioned. Dissenters were smeared and threatened with violence, and too many died suspicious deaths to be coincidence. I'll let ex-mormons speak about the LDS ("latter day saints") church today, on whether or not it is a cult in the common understanding of the term. **EDIT**: Johnny Harris (who is ex-Mormon) did a video on what Mormons actually believe. You may find some of what is exposed informative. #Johnny Harris | [The REAL story of the Mormon church](https://youtu.be/hUW7j9GmXjI) Ancient Paths TV (a Presbyterian ministry ) talks about the criminal side of the founder of Mormonism: #Ancient Paths TV | [Joseph Smith: Behind the Mask](https://youtu.be/MsVM89lM0tQ) The early Mormon church operated like organized crime with a religion overlaid on it. The core group was into financial fraud and counterfeiting. And to solidly qualify for the “cult” label, they threatened and murdered dissenters and whistleblowers who spoke out against abuses such as Joseph Smiths serial adultery (before polygamy became part of their doctrinally accepted practice).
Exmo here. I would describe it as a cult full of well-meaning (though often quite judgemental) people who are by-and-large *trying* to be good christians, but who are being lied to and tricked by church leadership--other than the contingent of leadership that actually believes, that is. That's how I'd classify my own parents. They genuinely, truly love Jesus and want to follow him with their whole hearts, but they both came from abusive homes and they got snapped up into the Mormon church while they were young and vulnerable. And now, because of the information control exercised by the church, it's all but impossible to get them to read anything critical of Mormonism. (Also, a deep dive into LDS (Mormon) history makes it very obvious that the whole thing has been a con from the beginning. There were never any gold plates, nor Urim and Thummim, it was always a peepstone in a hat, and a fraud who was determined to never work an honest day in his life and to bang as many underage girls as he could.)
So, [South Park](https://youtu.be/XWoePkBt31g?si=qu5W8J48h3qWA3yk) painted an accurate depiction then?
At the time, I thought it was "anti-Mormon lies", and it was a gut punch when I found out that that South Park episode was more historically accurate than what I'd been taught all my life.
My wife's parents spend like 30 hours a week at the temple and seem like judgmental assholes. Well meaning but still assholes. I always point to that South Park episode because it's such a true depiction of it all. Comedic, but fairly accurate.
Dum dum dum dum dum!
Lucy Harris, smart, smart, smart, smart, smart, smart, smart!
Agreed 100%. I've observed the same since moving to Utah and I've seen it in my own Mormon in-laws. My MIL a raised Catholic and they tried to tell her her mother was in Purgatory. If she became Mormon, she could just do a baptism for the dead for her and all would be "well."
Yea I am Mormon. Stopped going the day I turned 18. The reason I am still Mormon is because there is process to “quit” but they don’t allow it to happen and will just excommunicate you. That process comes with a stigma that you are pedophile or similar. Other than that it’s not much different than other churches except for the amount of content. Sunday is gone cause church lasts about 4 hours. I also had to go to church before school and it was so early school wasn’t open when we got there and we would have to wait in the cafeteria. I hated my experience there but to be fair I would have hated it no matter what religion my family was. Just not my thing.
If you can’t just leave - it’s a cult.
Well I agree all churches are cults but I could physically leave. Anyone can physically leave. I am just on their registry or list or whatever as being a Mormon even though I haven’t been associated with it in 32 years. Just pointing out there is definitely a difference between Mormons and Scientologists
For what it's worth, my wife and I both resigned from the Mormon cult. Used the online attorney who files the demands to the church that they remove our records. No muss, no fuss, and no excommunication. (They're welcome to excommunicate me at any time. The church excommunicated a man simply because he campaigned to always have a parent or guardian present for interviews with local church leaders, where they have traditionally happened with only the leader and the child, with the leader asking sexually explicit and detailed questions of a minor. That's not a religion led by any kind of good I want to worship. Getting kicked out by such an organization would be a badge of honor and morals to me.) Personally, I knew it was over for me the day I realized I was using my own internal moral compass to determine if I felt the church was making moral choices. When you use your own thoughts to determine if a religion is moral, that is a failed religion. Every single time the Mormon church had the opportunity to guide society and improve it, they've made the choice to side with bigotry. Black people couldn't hold the priesthood forever. Women have no authority in the church and are quite literally taught to submit to their husbands. Gay people, even those out of the church, should not be legally allowed to marry. The list goes on, and the Mormon church goes MAGA at every opportunity. Cult And for those in the know, you can probably guess where my username came from. (Hyrum is my super-secret heaven-only name.) Cult
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That's pretty much me point by point. Funny story: They called and I said "I'd like my name removed from the member list, please." They said "Please send a formal request in a letter to your local bishop." I did. It came back unopened two weeks later, stamped "Unclaimed. Return to sender." Passive aggressive much?
When I moved out of state the Mormons in Texas started coming to my house. I had to call my mom and tell her that I was being nice but I wasn’t going to be nice anymore and what I do will look badly on her. That was the last time they contacted me. They wanted to send home teachers to my house.
You might be happy to learn it's down to just 2 hours on Sunday now!
I think you're forgetting about baptisms for the dead and other secret temple ceremonies. As are most of the people commenting here. I too was raised in the church and participated in some of these ceremonies. Not to even mention the fact that tithing is required in that if you don't pay tithing, you can't get your temple recommend. If you can't get your temple recommend, you can't go to the celestial kingdom. The threat of being separated from your family for all of time and eternity is pretty coercive imo. You can just leave the church, that's true. But that doesn't mean the church won't send congregants and missionaries to your door to love bomb you and try to guilt you into coming back. That doesn't mean that your family and friends won't shun you. All of this feels pretty cult like to me.
Again, I said churches are cults, I can’t stand organized religion. Honestly forgot about baptisms for the dead that is some whacky shit. In case people aren’t aware…you can pray to your dead relatives and if they are willing, they accept your invite to join the church. Since they have no body you are their stand in and get baptized for them. It’s run like an auction where the guy doing the baptisms goes so fast you can’t understand him and just quick words dunk quick words dunk. Edit: OK I may have downplayed how whacky they are, I admit you are right, it’s different than most churches.
Didn’t they do this to a bunch of dead celebrities too? Found a link [Mormon baptism of Holocaust victims draw ire](https://apnews.com/article/992dd887f7b948d0a08055dff0363aa4) Yeah, they were baptizing Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth along with all those Holocaust victims. Anne Frank is in there too.
As an ex-Mormon, it always struck me as odd that everyone did temple work (baptisms for the dead) (cult) for the heroes of history. Those peeps are already going to heaven. Why is no one doing temple work for the evil people who need it most? It's always been about chasing clout, both baptizing dead celebrities and handing out BoM for no reason than to brag at the next priesthood meeting. God, I'm so glad I didn't believe in gods any longer. Cult
And magic underwear
Don’t know the degree of excommunication you are talking here. But I would say that if all your families and friends who remain in the religion are told to cut ties with you when you leave, or they will be punished in someway, it is a cult.
Fucking hated morning seminary. And church changed to 2 hours right when I left.
If you look at the BITE\* model of authoritarian control (which is used to classify cults), the LDS (Mormon) church ticks most of the boxes. LDS missionary life ticks even more of the boxes. That doesn't mean that all Mormons are bad people, or that none of them have a healthy relationship with the religion, but in my experience Mormonism crosses boundaries into controlling your life that a religion should not. Mormonism dictates: * What you can drink (no coffee/tea/alcohol) * What underwear you wear * Whether you're "worthy" of wearing said underwear (yes, really) * What clothing you wear (it had better cover your "garments", AKA the special underwear) * Who you should listen to (the current church president has said "never take counsel from those who do not believe", direct quote) * Who you can marry (sorry gays, you're outta luck!) * Who is allowed to attend your wedding (I was not allowed to attend my older brother's wedding. I had to sit outside!) * Your family structure (for most of its history, in Mormon weddings, the husband would covenant to obey God, and the wife would covenant to obey her husband) If you want to decide for yourself whether Mormonism is a cult, you can watch a secretly-recorded Endowment ceremony (AKA a big part of what goes on in Mormon temples) on YouTube. Channel name is NewNameNoah \*Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, Emotion Control
The underwear really gets too me. If God wanted people to wear them, He'd have given people garments that didn't give them yeast infections and other skin issues. Nor would He tell people to dress up like demented chefs in green aprons in the temple, or have a secret Holy of Holies where church leaders are told their place in the Celestial Kingdom is assured no matter WHAT they do on Earth from that point on. Don't get me started on how Joseph Smith and Brigham Young basically twisted Christianity into something that would "force" him to have a harem of teenage girls. They had an abortionist living down the road.
oh and dont forget when you need to destroy your garments because they are old, dont fit or whatever, that you need to cut out the little x's that are where the nipples would sit for...fuck I cant remember the reasoning behind it. But its like...fucking why though!?
They're basically symbols stolen from Freemasons weren't they? The level, the right angle, etc.
Yes, the compass and the square (right angle). Almost all of the temple rituals are stolen from freemasonry.
This should be higher up. "Cult" shouldn't merely mean "is weird" because what's weird religiously is all a matter of perspective. "Cults" have *control* of their members, that's the big defining element.
My extended family is all Mormon (I am not) so I've learned a lot about the religion over the years. They don't tell you what underwear you can wear. You *can't* wear the temple garments unless you've done an endowment ceremony in the temple, but Mormons who haven't done that can wear whatever underwear they want. They also don't really dictate what clothes you wear. If you do wear the garments they need to be covered, but if you don't then it's kind of whatever. I've seen my cousins wear tiny shorts and tank tops and no one batted an eye. Of course you need to dress modestly in church, but that's pretty standard practice for any church. I've also been to plenty of Mormon weddings. I still think it's kind of a cultish religion and just pretty weird in general. I acknowledge that my family might be in a more lax church community, but I've had other Mormon friends over the years (I don't live near my family) that have reinforced what I pointed out.
>endowment ceremony in the temple, A required ceremony to go to heaven for Mormons btw. Most Mormons do it when they turn 18. So, from then on they do dictate what underwear you wear (or face eternal consequences) > If you do wear the garments they need to be covered IIRC they recently started making shorter ones, but back when I was Mormon (more than a decade ago, so bear with me lol) the garments were really long. I think it used to be much more restrictive than it is now... But don't quote me on this part. >I've also been to plenty of Mormon weddings. I'm 95% sure that the actual wedding part (according to the religion, not the law, of course) has to be done inside a Mormon temple, where only "worthy" Mormons can go. I'm sure some people do a normal wedding and a Mormon one, or something like that.. but growing up Mormon I was never allowed to attend any actual weddings because I wasn't old enough to be "worthy". Any non-Mormons or kids had to just come to the after party. Overall growing up Mormon, especially in Utah, I'd say it's extremely cult-y. Especially how non-members are treated. (In my experience, of course)
Don't they believe in three "levels" of heaven? I remember my grandma telling me she was sad I wouldn't be in the celestial kingdom and when I asked her to elaborate she told me that because I'm a good person I'd still end up in one of the three heavens/kingdoms but not the one God lives in. Or something like that. You're right that there is a ceremony for those who are allowed in the temple, but most of my family who qualify for that go to the temple on their own to do that and then have a traditional wedding and reception sometime after. I assume they do it this way so all their friends/family can be part of the celebration. I didn't even know about the temple ceremony part until I was in my late teens. My family is in Idaho so maybe it's not quite the same vibe. My mom left the church before I was born and so did most of her siblings and lots of cousins and we are still welcomed and treated well by the rest of the family. I remember my great-aunt scolding my grandma once for trying to get me to go to seminary school. She said something about how "family is family" and it doesn't matter if I'm LDS or not, I'm still loved. My great-aunt is a feisty old thing. I should call her 😆
There are 3 "levels to heaven" Celestial, Telestial and Terrestrial. Basically if you are in the celestial kingdom, you are most worthy and essentially become your own god where you can create your own world or some stupid bullshit. Telestial is for the "good" people who made decent decisions in life. Terrestrial is for people who haven't accepted the gospel, but others in heaven come down to preach the word of god and you can accept it and move up a tier or not and just stay there. Thats my basic recollection of it, I could be missing things, its been fucking years. I was sealed to my parents when I was around 8. My dad is not my biological father but he adopted me when I was 3 and he has always been dad. They needed to write to the prophet, and get special permission so that we could be sealed. I had to be in a completely white dress, so did my mom, and my dad was in white as well. We knelt at an alter in the middle of a room where the walls were all mirrors, so when you seal yourselves to each other its a physical metaphor how you will be together forever and it keeps going no matter where you look or something. Yea thats a creep vibe of 10 there sir.
Pretty spot on, but you mixed up Terrestrial and Telestial. The order doesn’t make sense tbh. Growing up, I was taught that Telestial is basically Earth without all the bad things, Terrestrial is like the traditional Christian concept of heaven, and Celestial is where God and Jesus live, along with the most righteous who have made all of the necessary covenants, specifically, being sealed to your spouse. The three tiers are also often compared to the sun (celestial), moon (terrestrial), and stars (Telestial) in terms of “glory/brightness”. Sorry for the long ramble lol, I’ve got a lifetime of knowledge (or a childhood at least) and it all came tumbling out
Ahh thank you! Its been a while since I have thought about this all, so I am not surprised that I mixed the two up.
That sounds more like Mormonism outside of Utah. Inside Utah it's VERY cult like, and they try to control everything including local politics and whether non believers can buy alcohol.
The BITE model is BS. The US government is a cult according to BITE.
I think that model is kind of silly, and not just because when you look it up it appears with a big fat TM next to it. You would be able to make similar criticisms about any civilized society. Being a functional adult means being in control of what information you consume, your emotions, how you behave and think.
It depends on how you define a cult. The silly things like the temple undergarments, caffeine abstinence, the magic hat with the tablets that only John whoever can see, the obviously made up weird rules. The weird beliefs are weird but they’re absolutely not the red flags of a cult. Every religion has just as much bat shit crazy lore as Mormonism. But some of the basic red flags to look for are how they treat people who have left the church and how they try to isolate members from nonmembers. In both of those measures, Mormonism is 100% a cult. Ex Mormons are straight up cut off from their families, and they’re taught that the non LDS world hates them.
That I know of that’s Jehovah’s Witness not LDS.
It's both.
Asking this question on reddit will give you zero legitimate answers
Asking Redditers about any particular religion is like asking the Gestapo about Judaism.
Is there a place I can ask for better answers?
If you really want to learn about a religion, you should speak to its adherents, not its enemies. Reddit, in general, is one of the most anti-religious communities you'll find - I would say, especially when it comes to Mormons. LDS church doctrine, beliefs, and teachings are not secret by any means. Go to the source.
I have for like 19 years and there's where i started doubting
So, are there aspects of the religion that you feel are cult-like?
There's some but it feels kinda insignificant overall for considering it a cult since the rituals are so brief, they hold importance of course but I don't really feel they're harmful? I think what was the most cult-like experience I had was the lesson I got as a kid that true joy only exists when you're in the church and that if you're out you can't experience that positive of an emotion and are more susceptible to negative emotions and that felt odd to me since I felt kinda numb but I was trying hard to obey and I'd see people outside the church seem so happy and that they weren't that different. I kinda felt guilty for not being joyful while at church but other than that I think the fault lied in my own understanding of the lessons I was taught there rather than the church itself.
Interesting. A lot of what you're describing is just...religion - a set of beliefs and doctrine that followers believe will lead to peace, joy, and happiness, which in turn would mean that NOT following that doctrine would lead to, you guessed it, less peace, joy, and happiness. Most of reddit will you that, by definition, is a cult. It's not. If I were you, I'd try to not get hung up on trying to determine "is it a cult, yes or no" and focus on what makes you most happy. There are people who are happier in a religion and people who aren't. As far as Christian religions are concerned, flowing Christ's example and teachings is the path to peace, happiness, and joy. That entails, at a most basic level, loving God and loving your neighbor. And the best way to love God is by serving His fellow children. There are people outside of religion altogether who live these principles and feel those blessings and many inside religion who don't.
> if you're out you can't experience... This is precisely the mind control cults use. The threat that life outside the group will be worse, more dangerous, etc. This is exactly the type of teaching that traps people in cults. The idea that _only we_ have the true answers and _only we_ know true joy. That only one group has the ultimate truth or the ultimate answer is a feature of cults. I grew up in a cult and questioned. I left at 19 and ran thousands of miles away. Best decision I ever made. I suggest understanding what makes a cult: https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model-pdf-download/ https://freedomofmind.com/search_gcse/?q=Mormon
That doesn’t make any sense at all. If you want accurate information, you need to evaluate ALL the information you can get, both from adherents and critics. There is a *substantial* amount of important information about the church that members won’t tell you, and will only admit if pressed on it. My mom refuses to admit that she mimicked slitting her own throat on her wedding day in the temple. My aunt denies that Joseph Smith married 33 other women without the knowledge of his first wife. I was a Mormon missionary and told people earning $2/day that all their tithing money goes to run the church and provide humanitarian aid. People are not forthcoming about their religion when it's embarassing.
Yes. You should only read 5 star reviews made by company employees when buying something on Amazon. That makes perfect sense [to mormons I guess]. Seriously though, r/mormon or r/latterdaysaints will probably both give you reasonable answers. The second is a curated forum for believers, but the first is open to believers and nonbelievers.
Look for free online classes about world religions. I don't know of any myself, but I haven't looked either.
If you want a higher level of understanding seek out some professors of religion who have studied this for a while. I am certain you can get at least a few to talk with you casually.
ExMormon here - yes, ish. Mormonism hits all of the key points of a cult. The new fancy term for that is high demand religion but fun fact those mean the same thing. For example, there are secret handshakes you have to learn in the temple that are based on Masonic rituals because Joseph Smith wanted so desperately to be a Mason but they would not let him join. Speaking of Joseph Smith, the man was a literal con man who has a criminal record because he would use these stones that he called seer Stones, just rocks he found, to "find" treasure for people. Then he took those same stones, maybe not the exact same rocks but the same concept, and said these are actually called the urim and thumim and I'm going to make spectacles out of them AKA put a rock in a hat, don't ask, and I can now translate this language called reformed Egyptian, which does not exist by the way, but no one else can see the golden plates except for him and translate it into the history of the ancient Central Americans. He plagiarized a lot of books to come up with the BoM, and then all of a sudden he needs to get a lot more power and he does that by sending his highest ranking members off on missions so he can literally steal their wives. Sometimes those girls were under the age of 15. He had I believe, I might be wrong on this exact number, seven wives under that age. So, knowing that's how that religion was founded... and then Brigham Young was the second in command after Joseph Smith was rightfully murdered. He is by and large one of the worst humans to ever have Any kind of power in America up to today. You do the math. If you have more questions of the founding of this cult/it's attempts to pretend they're not a scam, feel free to ask!
Technically, a "cult" is a religious system that runs on secrets: you join, you learn a secret; you advance levels or whatever, you learn more secrets. Religions like Christianity or Islam are open; while there is a lot you can learn on your faith journey, and learning is definitely part of the process, there's no information that's deliberately withheld for initiates only. Mormonism definitely had its share of "members only" sorts of information, so in a very technical sense, yeah, it's a cult; but it's probably about as open as cults get.
Mormons aren’t allowed inside their own temples until they reach a certain level
There isn’t really a widespread accepted definition of a ‘cult’. Whether or not something semantically is classified as a cult isn’t really important. There’s religion, there’s cults, there’s cults that have nothing to do with religion, and there’s some overlap and gray area around all of those. Generally, whether or not something a cult often relies on how absurd you think a group of people’s beliefs are. But that’s a pretty subjective definition, and different people will reach different conclusions.
You’re mistaken. Cults are defined by control, not by secrets. For example, the Masons aren’t a cult, despite working almost entirely on so-called secret knowledge. In fact, the definition of what a cult exactly is is pretty ambiguous because it’s hard to pin down. What one person might call a cult another person will call serious faith or belief. But cults absolutely not defined by having secrets or not. Although many cults are secretive that’s true, and they often do have different ways that you can find increasing levels of spiritual or other connection or power. But they don’t necessarily have to have secrets. They just have to have a lot of control over practitioners lives. ETA to acknowledge the existence of non-religious cults per the comment below.
Cults aren't religious systems. Some cults are political or organized around something else that's not religion. Secrets are a component to cults, but what defines a cult is not secrecy. What defines a cult is the level of destructive control it has over its members.
Fair point. I think “cults” typically associated with religious or spiritual traditions because it’s pretty easy to create a delusional system of belief and set followers up as “special” using religion. You can do it with politics, and people absolutely do, but it’s a little bit more complicated and less common.
Throughout history there have definitely been religious cults.
Yes, there have. Religion is also not the feature that defines a cult. Cults are systems. Some are religious. Some are not.
Can you please share with the class how open they are about things like what they invest their money in AKA shopping malls or why they require specifically women to wear the most covered clothing or even why the garments are required? Yeah sure. If you are a Mormon in good standing you might know those things but that is not what is open. Open means everyone can know and easily access that information.
I thought a cult is a closed off community based on delusion, with some kind of leader?
Imagine someone today came along and said hey guys I was shown new revelations about Christianity in these amazing golden tablets. Those break and are gone but I wrote it all down and will tell you. It’s some pretty wild stuff and we may have to escape to a new state but this is like Christ +. Everyone would say no thanks David Koresh or Charles Manson but Joseph Smith came at the right decade and place. They also hide most of their ways they still deviate extremely from Christianity to appear as another denomination.
Cult. I grew up there and it’s a big mind fk that you can only see from the outside.
Have you seen those BYU interviews?
They follow people when they stop going to church, usually through their families, and update contact info and proceed to contact them about where the nearest Temple is so they can come back. I’ve known 3 people this happened to and all had to send a cease and desist for them to stop. They also keep children and young or vulnerable people in line by threatening them to either follow the teachings of the church or risk being shunned from their family and community for life. Not even most christian’s do that. Source: College in UT, dated 2 ex-mormons, friends with 3 ex-mormons. ETA: I think my response says enough but to be clear, very cultish behavior IMO.
Non-Mormon Utahn here: I've got a lot of thoughts about this stuff, but I'll keep it short. Mormon's are big on family and keeping the family together. At the core, their values are great. Are they a bit cult-ish? Sure. But they largely get a bad label because of misinformation and the extremists out there that still practice archaic beliefs Would I ever become a Mormon? Fuck no But y'all outside of the state need to calm down on them a bit
I am not a Mormon, but I know and am good friends with several. They have some cult like aspects to the religion. There are people who will check in on you every week. You are supposed to wear a certain underwear. We went to a wedding and we were only allowed to be there for part of it. The rest of it was private and Mormon only. Those things aside, they do not have many of the negative aspects people typically associate with cults. They can be friends with anyone. They can quit the church (one of my friends did). They should not do anything outside of church / being home with family on Sunday, but I knew plenty who cheated it with no consequence. They are genuinely nice people and have strong support systems to help each other through hard times. One of the Mormon families I know had a daughter who had several babies with different fathers. Her parents supported her rather than shun. Another family has a daughter who is trans. The church officially doesn't approve of that. Her parents still love and associate with her. I don't think calling them a cult is fair just because they have a stricter way of living.
They're just a cult that has survived long enough to become a mainstream religion. Go read about the history of their founding and beliefs. Its absolutely bonkers. They also have a long history of murdering people who didnt agree with them, and giving their young daughters to leaders of the church for their child bride polygamy.
Above Christianity but below JW, Scientology, and GBC. Probably on the same level as Hasidic Jews
It's regarded as a cult by OTHER cults to distract and deflect.
Yes, Mormonism is a high control environment that restricts its members freedom. This post goes on a great deal dissecting the controlling behaviors [https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/6xcgf6/the\_lds\_church\_seems\_to\_use\_the\_bite\_model\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/6xcgf6/the_lds_church_seems_to_use_the_bite_model_a/)
The time absorbed by the church, the implied mission requirement to bring you in to the "sunk cost" perspective, the isolation if you leave, the financial commitment required to be in "good standing, and the secret rituals all scream of a cult.
I’ve been Mormon for 60 years and I have come to clearly see a bunch of the culti-ness. The major give away is the oft repeated edict that criticizing the church leaders is a sin, even if the criticism is correct. The other is the firmly held belief that the top 15 leaders are all “prophets, seers and revelators”, in spite of an absolute dearth of prophesies, seeing into the future, or revelations. It must be said that the church largely teaches and instills good values, helps build strong families, generally takes care of their own, and the vast majority of members (in my experience) are nice people and good neighbors. But a real serious problem is there is no way out with your dignity and reputation intact. I know this is true in many religions, but I find it unforgivable that the church tacitly encourages people to ostracize members who choose to leave, regardless of the reason, and treat them as “less than” apostates. Fashioning themselves as being focused on the family, but then being the catalyst for exploding families is the very height of hypocrisy. They could fix this, but I’m not holding my breath.
I love when “regular” Christians call out Mormonism as a cult not realizing that Mormonism is just a fan fiction of “regular” Christianity which is a fan fiction of Judaism
Welcome to Reddit wherr they are all cults. Mormonism / Latter Day Saints are pretty cultish becaue they are fairly new, have some extra-wacky beliefs, and also mix business with the church to a high degree.
I would like to add in my two cents as well. I have seen a few non-members and former members share their insights, and I would like to do the same, as a current member of the Mormon church. I am a somewhat recent convert to the church. My faith journey is personal and sacred to me, but my life since becoming a Mormon has been so much better than before. I have a very real sense of peace and purpose in my life that I did not have before. My attachment to the church is founded on Jesus Christ, my savior and redeemer, not Joseph Smith or any other man. The Mormon church has been a tremendous blessing in my life, and I am grateful to be a part of it. I am happy to answer any questions, etc in PM's. Thank you!
Sense of peace I get but sense of purpose? What is the church asking of you that you feel is purposeful?
I have opportunities to serve others, both within and without my congregation. The theology of the Mormon church teaches that I should love others as Jesus loves me, and selfless service to others is how I interpret that commission. In serving others, I find more purpose in my day to day activities. When I meet new people, I try to see how I can minister to them as Jesus would. When I prepare my meals for the week, I think about who I might share it with. And so forth. In this way, I find more purpose in my life and the things I do, instead of being rote and routine, now take on special meaning as I try to love and serve others. I know when God is pleased with me when I feel peace in my heart.
Ahh, I see. The purpose of community and serving the community. To me this is what the church should be about. Jesus taught love for the whole of the community and too many people forget this. I hope you have a blessed and happy day!
You as well!
Part of the cult like nature is due to the novelty. They believe that the Book of Mormon was written on gold plates buried in New York and that their founder received a vision telling him to translate said plates in 1827. It's also particularly implausible seeming even by the standards of religious texts. Because the Book of Mormon has to involve both America so it's founder isn't unveiled as a fraud and the biblical times to connect it to Christianity, it tells us about a group that allegedly traveled from Israel to the US in 600 BC and about their visions of Jesus. Because of its focus on America it predicts things about America like that the Native people will rise up and throw off white people and rule over us which clearly haven't happened but probably seemed more plausible when more of them were alive in 1827. It's one thing when a religion makes fantastical claims about something that happened before recorded history. It's another thing to make more recent and obviously falsifiable claims. Therefore, they have to be more assertive in their indoctrination and recruiting. That said, maybe in 1,800 years, when most current history is forgotten, Mormonism will become more like other religions and less culty.
Nothing. Being a Mormon is no more of a cult than any other religion. They are all cults. Not "cult qualities", but cults. They all use the same methods to get and keep members and get get as much money out of them as they can. If you were going to say the difference between a cult and a religion, I'm not sure one could really come up with a difference that was meaningful.
All religions are cults
It was the Scientology of the 1800's. On a scale of 1-10, and Scientology is a 10, mormons are a solid 9.5 and Jehovah's Witnesses are a solid 9.9. If you have heard about anything that happens behind closed doors in the temples, they earn that 9.5. You need to learn handshakes. They legitimately believe that when Jesus resurrected, he came to the US with a bunch of israelites who became native americans. Look up some of the history about it too. It's fucking bonkers how mormonites would show up places, weird shit happens, and everyone kicks them out. Illinois famously had their "mormon extermination order".
It wasn't Illinois, it was Missouri.
>Jehovah's Witnesses are a solid 9.9 That's accurate.
It qualifies as a cult under the BITE model, but it also kinda varies because exactly what’s taught varies from place to place and the culture can be different depending on where you are and stuff. While its members are on missions, it dials the cult tactics up to 11 for them. It definitely not the cult-est religion out there, but it’s definitely one for the most part.
It has its own cult tiers that vary by racism and polygamy that’s pretty unique due to a bevy of non-orthodox communities
Listen to testimonials from former LDS. It’s extremely culty. It’s also the wealthiest religion in the world
I went on a Mormon mission and later worked at the MTC (missionary training centre). As a missionary I had no control over where I was sent and I was moved every three to six months with only a few hours notice. I could only contact my family by written letter once a week, two phone calls a year. My family never knew if I’d been moved to another area until I wrote them to say so. Lots of mail went missing for this reason. At the MTC it was my job to keep missionaries focussed on their studies and to ignore all the home sickness and urge to contact family and girlfriends etc.
I have had friends who were mormon and I got a bit on insight and he told me a few things. They are much more alienating and hostile to ppl who leave the church, to where much of the time it can break the family up. You can lose friends etc. He happened to be one of the ppl who left the church. Also dont mormons pay "tiding"? Like you have to pay money to the church? But they dont really do anything crazy otherwise. Youre also encouraged to make friends and marry within the church. So you can see how this problem amplifies, ppl leaving lose *a lot* in their life I would give it a 6.5/10 on the cult scale
Religions are really just cults with tenure......if you hang around for long enough people start seeing it as normal.
As an exmormon who was Mormon in an area of the country that is majority southern Baptist, it never felt cultish. If anything, rhe southern baptists seemed hyperfocused on minding everyone else's activities for dessert. Everything people mention in here as a sign of being s cult. You couldn't get away with in any church and expect to remain a member in good standing. Want to go against the preacher of a church for some reason? You're gonna find yourself on the outs and shunned and just may need to go find a new church. Lds is much more like the mcdonalds of church's. Every one is supposed to be the same. Because there isn't a preacher of the church, just rotating leader chosen every year or two from the congregation. They even get a vote of confirmation from the congregation. Yes they tell their members they're going to the worst he'll if they leave the church. But most Christian churches also preach about turning your back on faith. I dont think they're that much different than any other church or religion.
All religions are cults it's just a sliding scale whether or not it's seen as one based mostly on size and acceptance.
"in a way most religons aren't?in a way most religons aren't?" ...Um...
>STUPID ANSWER HERE: The Cult is only labelled bad if the Dear Leader forgets to lock the basement, painting production stops, and customers find out why they can't buy paintings of the Dear Leader anymore. Source: Call him Kevin
I don't see a difference between Mormonism and Catholicism in terms of fanaticism. The fervour is the same, and they both exile people who dare to criticize or go against minor infractions. Not to mention, they both have a money grab to them - no different than Scientology, and the origin story is equally as nonsensical. Objectively, all of these religions start as a cult until they hit a critical mass and become "accepted"
The question of whether Mormonism is a cult is a matter of debate and perspective. Some people consider Mormonism to be a cult due to its unique origins, practices, and authoritarian structure, while others see it as a legitimate Christian denomination. Mormonism, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), has some characteristics that are commonly associated with cults, such as: 1. Authoritarianism: The church has a strict hierarchy and expects members to follow the guidance of its leaders. 2. Isolationism: Mormons are encouraged to prioritize their relationships with fellow church members and to avoid outside influences. 3. Unique beliefs and practices: Mormonism has distinctive doctrines and rituals that differ from mainstream Christianity. 4. High level of commitment: Mormons are expected to adhere to a strict code of conduct and to make significant time and financial commitments to the church. However, Mormonism also shares many characteristics with mainstream Christian denominations, such as: 1. A large and widespread membership 2. A well-organized institutional structure 3. A focus on family and community values 4. Engagement in humanitarian work and community service Ultimately, whether or not to label Mormonism as a cult is a matter of personal opinion and depends on how one defines a cult. It's important to approach the topic with nuance and to recognize that Mormonism is a complex and multifaceted religious movement.
Things that make Mormonism more culty than mainstream non-fundamentalist Christianity 1. anything that’s anti-mormon is considered to be inspired of the devil 2. Anything the leaders say is considered to be a commandment from God 3. they control believers’ underwear 4. they control what congregations believers are allowed to attend 5. believers are assigned friends
What they believe in and the fact the church is aware of their finances and expects payment seem cult like to me. 🤷♂️
Cult can be defined as "great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work" Under this definition. The following could be classified as a cult: - Catholicism - Mormonism - Apple, Inc. - GameStop - America - Democratic Party - Conservatism - Maoism - Socrates - Star Wars - Lord Helix - 🧿 - 🗿 - Capitalism - Masonry - Mr. Un
More cult-like than mainstream Christian denominations (orthodox and its variants, Catholicism, baptists, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc..,) but not as cult-like compared to a lot of small Christian denominations and other weird religions.
>but not as cult-like compared to a lot of small Christian denominations Which ones? Name a few of those.
Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Unification Church are popular examples. The Family International and the Palmarian Catholic Church are smaller, but still prominent, Christian offshoots. Theres many more but I’m not incredibly well versed in it :)
A cult is where a guy has a bunch of followers believing his every word, in a religion that guy is dead.
Asking this question would be like going on r/science and asking if people believe in God
No, it’s not
Very much. Current and past in-laws are Mormons. No idea how that happened. This round of in-laws are worse. When you are part of the church it's essentially for life. Your parents add you to a registry and Mormon missionaries will harass you at least once a year. There is also a prayer list within the church and if some family member tells the whole damn organization your business, all your Mormon neighbors find out about it. Said family member will hand out your address even. It's not as bad as it was, but decades ago the Mormon church didn't like Mormon kids playing with non-Mormon kids. There is also a lot going on with the church buying up houses and Mormons who don't pay tithes being allowed into the temples but this post would get really long if I went over every particular.
All religions are cults that got institutionalized.
I'd opine that a lot of what makes people feel like Mormonism is a 'cult' is just that it \*seems\* weird because it's different from what they consider "mainstream" religion. A lot of the comments on here stress things that people see in Mormonism that they feel make it different from mainstream Christianity, but from my POV there's definitely those same elements in the Christianity they're used to - but the inherent biases in the worldview of someone raised in that faith make it very difficult to see how similar it is.
No more cultists than every other church based religion. Gotta keep you repenting so you keep coming so you keep tithing.